


Fire and Ice

by rukafais



Category: A Hat in Time (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:23:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22527022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rukafais/pseuds/rukafais
Summary: "What do I hate the most?" is a question with no simple answer - at least, not to the master of the Subcon Forest.Or: "Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice."
Comments: 4
Kudos: 98





	Fire and Ice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MiniNephthys](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiniNephthys/gifts).



> A gift for a friend.

Sometimes he can't decide what he detests more; warmth or cold.

Cold is easy to hate; it's everything he is not. The bite of ice and the spidering crawl of frost brings back memories of shackles, chains, and stone walls. It brings back the memory of heartbreak, from when he still had a heart to break _(he swears that it will never happen to him again, bitter and vengeful, but over and over cold wind creeps in through the cracks, pushes open that door, no matter how tightly he locks it)._

So, he hates the cold. _(Cold is shackles and scars and a sleep that never ends. It's the barren sky and the sharp sound of scissor blades on hair, sliding across the skin, unwanted, unwarranted.)_

It's hers, like winter is hers, like the change of seasons, the orange fall of leaves and the barren branches of trees, are hers now. Snow and ice _(the gentle drift of snowflakes as the year turned, excuses to stay inside and watch from the windows, to watch snowball fights happen in the village square)_ are something he can easily do without.

Warmth is something that is his, without doubt. Opposites, enemies, _(contrasts, two people that once fitted together perhaps entirely too well),_ a raging fire that consumes ice and stops it from growing further. Melts it into water, a river pushing her away.

Fire burns in the hearth, in parts of Subcon, in the lanterns hanging from the trees. It burns in him, a black and bitter anger that keeps him warm even when the forest gets too cold for his tastes. _(Warmth lingers in his heart and in the small comforts he indulges himself in. Security, sanctuary, a life long gone._

_Occasionally, he remembers bright fragments; smiles, flowers, a hand to hold. Warmth was there, or he thought it was. Maybe it was never there at all._

_Maybe all the warmth came from him, and isn't that a sickening thought?)_

So, he doesn't hate warmth, not entirely. Sometimes he even enjoys it, mostly when he's burning things down.

But sometimes, the memories it stirs in him brings him less comfort than he'd like _(and even now, the way he is, powerful and capricious, he despises that he has to think of it as comfort at all)._


End file.
